Confessions of a Fundamentalist

I am a fundamentalists, whatever that is. Many years ago someone defined five tenants that must be believed to be considered a fundamentalist, but many militant fundamentalists added many other things to that short list. Today the word has been stripped of any legitimate definition and in fact is now applied to Christians who are sometimes mean and entrenched and seemingly without much compassion. It has morphed into a slander rather than a theological position. But in the final analysis I am one.

I believe the Bible is God’s unique and exclusive Word to all of mankind. I believe Jesus died for the sins of every single person ever born and I believe He rose bodily from the dead. I believe that only by faith in Christ by a living sinner can anyone be saved from hell and inherit eternal life. I believe Jesus is coming back to this earth to set up His kingdom again and it is a real and visible act just as tangible as His first visit. And I believe all the rest, whatever that means.

But I have within my spirit a lockbox that I do not easily share because it is often misinterpreted as weakness or even a contemplation of compromise. But confession is good for the soul so they say and maybe you too have some thoughts and desires that you commune with inside the sanctity of your own heart, away from the prying judgments of many who will never understand. These are not sinful desires, I have those as well, but these are longings and questionings about serving and worshiping Christ. And many of these thoughts are outside the fundamentalist manual and are forbidden in mixed theological company.

Now before I share my heart let me say that some of the practices I will share are exhibited by people who do not hold to sound Biblical doctrine including a version of the gospel to which I can never embrace. That is the reason for the word “confused” in my title, but nevertheless I continue to attempt to be honest with what I do see as Christ’s within the framework of a flawed theology. And I will not significantly deal with these theologies since that is not the reason for this post, neither in my experience is it productive since everyone has an answer, an excuse, and a way to alter words to either soften the error or even out rightly profess absolute conformity to all that fundamentalists believe doctrinally. While holding the empty cookie jar and with crumbs decorating their faces they loudly deny eating the food in question.

But there are some aspects of Christian movements that have sprung up within the last several decades that I must admit appeal to me spiritually. I have read a very little of a man named Shane Clairborne and his ministry. I believe he is called an emergent and sometimes a Quaker and I am sure I could find little in his doctrinal view with which to be in agreement, he may even be seriously in error in important areas of truth. However, he has lead a small movement called “The Simple Way” which endorses a simple way of living that significantly minimizes the hedonistic accoutrements that usually accompany a well rounded western Christian lifestyle. And along side that lifestyle comes a commitment to minister to the “least of these” including the homeless on the streets of Philadelphia. I cannot help myself, I find that much more than interesting, I find it desirable.

Many of us fundamentalists eschew the health and wealth movement as heretical and antithetical to genuine Christian teaching, but in our personal lives we practice many of the same teachings that we claim to be against. We have creatively carved out sections of our lives we use to concentrate on financial gain and success, and we exhibit an open love and attachment for things. We store up treasures for our future consumption and when these portfolios grow we proclaim God’s blessing. We ask God for strength to run the rat race but we never ask Him what part of that race is at odds with His specific and general will for the believer in Christ. How can it be Scriptural and how can it represent God’s heart for God’s people to hoard money for themselves while millions perish physically and spiritually? Unless there is another divine revelation, that western lifestyle goes against every teaching in all 27 books of the New Testament and does not reflect the living commitments of the early apostles and the community of believers.

I confess that when I read of a group of people who have purposed to withdraw from the western society that is built upon financial success and personal pleasure I am envious. And more than envious, I am haunted by the seemingly reasonable prospect that this is the way God desires His entire body to live. I also confess that my motives are mixed since I fully recognize that one of the residual effects would be that much of what now causes me to worry or fret would be eliminated. But that is residual, the core principle being that our lifestyle would be dedicated to Christ and more accurately reflect the eternal aspect of the gospel by rejecting that which consumes the entire western cultural experience. And perhaps when the world saw us meeting their needs and rejecting our own materialistic and hedonistic needs they might very well consider the Christ we preach.

Mother Theresa is another example. She did not share Christ with her Hindu patients and that illustrates a ministry that cannot be considered Christian. No Christ, no Christianity. But her life and commitment is something that should speak to all of us. Because of the nature of her shallow theology the devil deceives us into rejecting everything she did wholesale when in fact if someone who believed the gospel of Christ would have sacrificed to the same level what fruit could have been born? We exhibit the same excuse when we speak of the cults by saying they are working their way to heaven and that is why they are so committed. And we fail to see the self indictment in that statement.

And so I am confessing that I see the western lifestyles of evangelical Christianity as unbiblical expressions of the culture and not the New Testament teachings. How easily we have twisted and tortured clear teachings to mean almost the exact opposite of what they are saying. And when a verse is clear we have become adept at softening and contextualizing it until the biting truth is nothing more that a cultural guideline. When Paul says, “And with food and clothing be content” we have taken that to mean you can pursue wealth and pleasure, and store up much money for retirement and vacations, as long as we are content with food and clothing. And when Paul states that some have made financial gain a measure of godliness and God’s blessing, we ignore it and still give God most praise for monetary advancement except maybe for salvation itself.

I also am confessing that I see the event and production essence of the modern Sunday morning church service as a departure from the New Testament and spiritually unproductive many times in the lives of believers. New and better and creative are the goals which when achieved draw the crowds back for more. Hundreds of thousands of professing Christians sit in Sunday morning pews who have practiced their Christianity during the week on the same plane as their lost neighbors and substantially less than their Mormon and Watchtower counterparts. I find the typical “God bless us and our nation” prayers, led by a staff member, as a pitiful offerings and merely a caricature of true and seeking prayer, a mirage and not the substance. The entire process, complete with parking attendants and greeters and ushers and the entire entourage of trained people managers, is a well oiled machine that accomplishes its goal of human organization but does nothing to enhance the spiritual atmosphere which should be the entirety of the purpose for gathering.

Sunday morning is now an event which has been perfected during the week by well meaning performers, but when announcements take more time than prayer God is not impressed. It is an exercise in redundant religious pageantry that for many provides little more than the appetizer before the customary Sunday dinner. And when the pastor regurgitates a message that was purchased on the internet and complete with jokes and object lessons, well, that is not New Testament Christianity. I am one who sees the absolute necessity for a format change as it pertains to the Sunday gathering of believers. Substantially more prayer, more testimony, more confession, the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, and other ways to invite disciples to minister to the Lord and to others as well.

I see meditation and times of quite reflection and refreshing before the Lord as something that enhances rather than detracts. When I was first saved I did not know one other born again Christian. I had never been inside an evangelical church and I had no one to help disciple me. I would read the words of Jesus because I could understand them more clearly and I also would pray alone in a room, sometimes with only candlelight, and sometimes with incense burning. These were just tools to block out the world and I had not borrowed them from other religions and their practices. As a matter of fact, the Tabernacle of Moses had all those things. I have sometimes in these later years prayed in a room with candlelight, incense, and soft praise music. I absolutely disagree with studying eastern mysticism and incorporating their spiritual practices into Christianity, but that is not what I am doing.

I often find the hustle and bustle of the pre-service gathering to be somewhat irreligious and resembling more like a bus transit station rather than a group of blood bought believers gathering to meet and worship the Risen Christ. I realize that you cannot “atmosphere in” the presence of God but I also realize that some atmospheres are much more conducive to blocking out the temporal and seeking the eternal. Not mysticism but certainly experiencing the great mystery which is Christ and His glory. We have brought the sacred down to earth and removed the heavenly majesty and we have carved into a convenient earthly religion. We carry the Ark upon ox carts of our own cleverness.

I confess that I am hungry for a less American and more spiritual encounter with the Risen Christ when believers gather to worship. The concert atmosphere does nothing for me and the announcements and pay down the debt pleas just remove the freedom and life from what should be a concerted desire to be cleansed and changed by meeting with the Lord of our lives. That is not to say I am not edified by sometimes loud and celebratory music, I am. That is not to say I am not edified by soft and seeking worship music, I am. I love free and God centered worship music that lifts up our Great God. It is all the other stuff and the lack of things that could capture our spirits to focus on the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.

I am a fundamentalist, whatever that is. I am not afraid to worship in a charismatic meeting; I am not afraid to go to a reformed church meeting; I am not afraid to attend an all night prayer meeting; and I am not afraid to admit having a gnawing hunger for more of Christ and His presence in my life. And I am not afraid to go into some areas that are supposedly forbidden to fundamentalists. Compromising doctrinal truth does not have to be the by product of seeking to Christ in a deeper way and entering into His worshipful presence in atmospheres that others use improperly. There seems to be a blanket of spiritually searching believers who continue to ride the religious horse of predictability and relevance while others feel that altering truth can bring thirst to their parched souls.

Jesus is beautiful beyond words or thoughts. He has paid a price for our souls far beyond our pitiful abilities to fully comprehend. And this Magnificent Lord and August Savior, bids us come and learn of Him and worship at His feet. How have we allowed that privilege to become predictable and stagnant? Why have removed the mystery and glory and constructed a pragmatic worship experience that allows us and our needs to be front and center and has made God’s presence a forgotten thing much less something diligently sought after? We do not need some new and innovative doctrinal changes, we need a revival of seeking the Risen Christ within the truths He has so graciously revealed to us and the generations before us.

We do not come together to evangelize, but and if that occurs we praise the working of God’s Spirit. But when we gather, as believers and followers of the Lord Jesus Himself, we gather to seek and be with and worship and be changed by Him. There is no greater purpose and this spiritual gathering is not to be conformed to the dictates of our hearts or this world, it is to be guarded as a spiritual incubator designed to accommodate the Spirit of God and His working in our hearts to be drawn to our Wonderful Savior. Music cannot open our eyes and manipulation can not illuminate us to His glory, only by God’s Spirit working through a willing people can we ever hope to actually be in His presence and be changed.

And so these are some confessions of a fundamentalists who sees a need for God to change our direction and to deepen the stakes and lengthen the cords of our journey to know Him. Not abandoning His truth but deepening them in our spiritual lives. Some things seem uncomfortable, but perhaps that is what we need. Let us ask the Heavenly Father to once again fill us with a thirst that can only be quenched by His presence, and that we will not be satisfied with where we are in our journey, but we will take up our cross and pursue Him with a fresh spiritual vigor that cannot rest until we meet Him and are changed by His heavenly glory.

There is a spiritual rest in that which is devoutly to be desired.